


Turn Out the Lights

by honorbound



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: (slight) power play, F/M, Masturbation, Power Play, Roman's a brat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 19:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honorbound/pseuds/honorbound
Summary: Gerri doesn’t look up from her menu when Roman slides into the booth in the shadowed back of the bar.





	Turn Out the Lights

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in between Tern Haven and Argestes, before Logan and Nan's negotiations break down. 
> 
> Thank you to [okaynowkiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss) for beta reading!

Gerri doesn’t look up from her menu when Roman slides into the booth in the shadowed back of the bar. He flicks the corner of it, and when that doesn’t get a response, he nudges at Gerri’s ankle with his oxford. 

“Could you please remember your advanced age of 34 and grow up?” Gerri inquires pleasantly, eyes still on her menu. “I left playing footsie behind at 16.” 

“Ooh, Ger,” Roman settles his chin on his fist. “Tell me more about your highschool sexploits, I’m ready to get turned on.” 

“No.” 

As Roman can’t sit anywhere without fidgeting wildly, he starts kicking the edge of the booth and doesn’t stop until Gerri finally looks at him. “What?”

“What do you mean, what? I’m here for a dinner meeting with your father, not to be jogged to death by your restless leg syndrome.” 

“Oh, right. Yeah, he’s not coming. Rhea’s on the phone upstairs, he’s the most important man in the world, blah da fucking blah.” 

“So.” She stretches it out over several beats. “He sent you down?”

“Yeah.”

“To talk … acquisition strategy?”

Roman reaches over and plucks the olive spear from her martini. “C’mon, I’m not a total moron. It’s not like, hard. Gut ‘em for parts, pop off their heads, glue ours in place, turn a profit.” He pulls the olive off the toothpick and drops it into his open mouth. “Simple,” he says. 

“Hmm.” Gerri pulls her drink back. “I don’t think we want to disembowel the one news organization that’s actually in the majority of American living rooms.” 

“So we let them keep their guts, whatever. The important part, Gerri, are their freakish little heads, and that’s where we’ll get them.” 

She hums again, lips pursed. “Kendall wasn’t available?”

“Please, like you want to actually talk to that snot rag. Oh I’m Kendall, I live in a mountain of coke like Gollum-whatever-the-fuck and I only come out when there’s a full moon to jerk my dad off on a pile of quarterly reports!”

“This is a charming dinner conversation, Roman. Thank you.” 

“Look Gerri, forget Kendall. When you’re fucking, it doesn’t matter what hole you stick it in. I mean, not to you. Maybe it matters to the hole. I’ve graciously made my hole available to you, please fuck it at will.” 

“Jesus Christ. You’ve got to stop comparing business to sex. Even if it’s true. It’s vulgar. And reductive.” 

“Oh no, Gerri, what are you gonna do, make me read some bullshit corporate self-help book about winning friends and influencing people? My education cost as much as the GDP of a small country and I still can’t read. And anyway, that’s what money’s for.” 

“You’re a horrendous little brat.” 

“Am I? Fascinating. You do have to admit that I’m hanging in here. We’re going toe to toe.” His foot brushes her ankle again and lingers. “Tell me I’m a smart boy, you can do it. Not as smart as you, maybe.” He taps against her heel. “But I bet you can tutor me onto the honor roll.” 

“Don’t wheedle me, Roman. It doesn’t work.” 

“Is this wheedling? I thought we were flirting.”

“I thought you didn’t know how.” 

“Then I guess we’re both wrong. I mean, who knows what gets your box wet, probably some bodice-ripper shit. Veiny throbbing shafts or whatever. Although it’s not like your main demographic of senile old men is a hotbed of sexual magnetism, so I understand your confusion on what’s happening here.”

She stops him feeling his way up her leg by kicking his foot away in a complicated move that ends with his calf pinned against the booth, the point of her heel digging in roughly. 

“You want to play? Don’t talk. Sit there until I’m through eating.” She releases his leg. Roman’s pulse stutters in his throat.

The quiet lasts about three minutes, Gerri peacefully sipping her martini while Roman fidgets, until Roman shoots his hand into the air and waves wildly at a harried waiter who comes over to the table. Roman nods at Gerri and then holds his finger over his lips. He mimes scribbling something with a pen and then points at the waiter’s menu pad. The waiter, whose name tag identifies him as Bryan, looks confused. Roman gestures more manically. Bryan looks over to Gerri for an explanation. She shrugs. “I think he wants your notepad.” 

Roman huffs in agreement. Bryan slowly pulls his notepad from his apron and slides it across the table with a careful motion more suited to a hostage negotiator than a waiter in the nicest hotel in Portland, Maine. 

Roman snatches the pen and pad and scrawls for a moment before he tears the page off and slides it back to Bryan. 

In demented capital letters, he’s written: 

_ MOMMY WON’T LET ME TALK BUT I’M HUNGRY _  
_ FRIES (KETCHUP ON THE SIDE) _  
_ THOSE EDAMAME BEAN THINGS _ _  
TA TA FUCK OFF :)_

Bryan reads it then looks at Gerri again. “Uh, is everything … okay, here?” 

“Oh, we’re grand,” Gerri says. Roman nods along, then mimes putting his head in a noose. 

“Right,” Bryan says. “I’ll just go, uh, put this order in.” Roman waves at his back then smirks at Gerri. 

“You know, Roman,” she says, taking the notepad away. “You’re being tedious.” 

Roman raises his eyebrows but leaves the _so what _ unsaid.

“Listen to me, and before I say anything, know that this is only happening because I’m bored.”

He leans forward. 

“Go upstairs – write your room number down – and wait for me. Thank you. Now get out of here.” 

Roman practically trips sliding out of the booth. Gerri signals the waiter and cancels Roman’s order in favor of another martini. 

When she goes upstairs almost an hour later, the latch is propping Roman’s door ajar. She knocks anyway, then pushes it open and almost trips over the pile of clothes in the doorway. Gerri kicks them away, annoyed. 

“Roman?” She flicks the light on. He’s sprawled on top of the bedspread in his boxers, his arm thrown over his eyes. Christ, he looks young. “Too busy to answer me?”

“Heeey, I didn’t know I was allowed to talk now,” Roman whines. “I left the door open for you.”

“I noticed. Anyone could have walked in, but maybe that was the point.” 

“Are you calling me a slut?” Roman sits up in mock-horror. “I’m your _ boss_. I’ll make you go to one of those fuckin’ harrassment trainings, see how you like it.” 

“Considering what I’ve heard from you as recently as tonight, I hardly think my comment is enough to warrant it. Maybe if I’d ordered you on your knees and called you a sick bastard, you’d have cause.” 

“I’m not that easy, Gerri. I’m not just gonna roll over and do what you say.” 

She looks at him on the bed where he’s been waiting for her. It’s an obvious, pitiful lie. Roman breaks eye contact first, ears red.

“If we’re going to work together successfully, Roman, you’ll have to learn to take direction,” Gerri says. She unbuttons her shirt cuffs. “It’s late,” she says, moving towards the bed and rolling her sleeves up. “Past time for you to be asleep.” 

Roman lets her pull the sheets back and then over him. She reaches past him for the light, but he grabs her arm. 

“No, don’t. I like it on.” 

“Afraid of the dark?” 

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Fuck you.” She leaves it on, though, and sits on the edge of the bed. Roman’s already pulled his hands back under the blanket. She’s got that dark thrill of sick fascination again. It’s turning into a habit. “Are you touching yourself?” she asks. Roman shakes his head. “You’d better get to it, I’m only giving you five minutes.” 

He looks at her then, directly, before showily snapping the waistband of his boxers. Gerri rolls her eyes. 

“You know what you are?”

“What am I?” Roman breathes, already a little distracted. 

“You’re disgusting. Aren’t you embarrassed, even a little? You little pervert, getting off on this.”

She watches his hand move faster under the blanket. “You’re one sick fuck, Roman,” she says, then pushes his hair back off his forehead. It’s a gentle motion, tender even. Of all the Roys, she likes Roman best. He’s a fucked-up kid stuck in a fucked-up family; you can’t buy your way out of that. She keeps her hands soft on his head, running them through his hair even as she lashes him with her tongue. He speeds up, breathing hard. He’s gone somewhere; his eyes are dark and unfocused. She watches him, fascinated. It doesn’t take five minutes. It doesn’t even take two before he comes with a quiet groan. 

“Goodnight,” she says, businesslike again. “I’ll leave you to it.” She gets up before giving the bedspread a final tug to straighten it. 

Gerri finds the light switch on her way out the door. She’s turning it off when she hears Roman softly say “Night, bitch.” She closes the door. 


End file.
